Hope for the Colorado Delta

From the Arizona Republic:

Starting with construction in the 1920s and ’30s of the massive Hoover Dam outside Las Vegas, the Colorado River has become one of the world’s most thoroughly “managed” rivers. The Colorado provides water for 3.5 million acres of irrigated farmland and for 30 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and other cities in the Southwest. As a result, by the 1970s, the delta was all but dead and barren with barely a trickle of water finishing the 1,450-mile journey that starts in the Rocky Mountains. The wildlife and birds all but disappeared. Meager water flows also devastated the indigenous people who did their best to preserve their culture.

The story line changes, however. Tremendous floods in the mid-1980s and late 1990s were tragic for many communities but were magical for the parched estuary. The delta was not dead after all. Conservationists, water managers and scientists in the U.S. and Mexico were astounded at the rapid, if only partial, recovery they witnessed. This ecological resurrection changed the thinking about the delta.

I recently participated in an inspiring gathering in San Francisco that focused on new ideas for restoring the delta. Organized by the Sonoran Institute, the meeting included people working in many different ways to restore the delta. Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, Mexico’s environment minister, summarized three critical opportunities to scale up this important work:

• Dedicate a small amount of Colorado River flows (less than 1 percent to the delta for restoration purposes).

• Allow Mexico to participate in proposed water-banking and trading mechanisms for the Colorado River.

• Allow entities, such as conservation organizations, to buy water rights to use for restoration of stream flows and vegetation.

To read the full text of this article from the Arizona Republic, click here.

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